Captain's Journal

Fort Lauderdale Fishing Report

Our daytime Swordfish trip ended a great week of Fort Lauderdale fishing. Schoolie Mahi-mahi invaded our off shore area with large amounts of seaweed making it hard to keep baits clean. But when they were clean, the fish had no problem biting well.

Most of the action was 5 to 10 miles from shore with huge areas of weed. These large beds make the perfect haven for small baitfish and food for the small Dolphin. While 30% had to be released because of their small size, it certainly didn’t take away from the action and fun of seeing these fish attack our baits. If you check out our Facebook page, you’ll see a video of these small fish swimming right behind the boat. . https://www.facebook.com/Fanntastic-Fishing-1476203306014764/

With all this great Fort Lauderdale fishing action, I was quite excited when J. R. and his wife Nicole came across the state to go daytime dropping for Swordfish. With near calm seas and a bright sunny day we were off with high expectations, at least Hunter and I were. LOL JR expected nothing but a nice day.

There was an area we could have fished on the way out, it looked great for Mahi, but we continued a bit further. Our ultimate goal was a Sword so we pressed on.

Another area we found looked promising and we fished a bit but things thinned out so we again pushed for the Swordfish grounds. Our first drop hit the water at 10 am. We were connected at 10:20!

Hunter had just finished explaining how the electric reel we use worked when the rod tip tweaked. JR smashed the button and the rod bent over hard! Since we had just found the bottom again and come up a bit, I feared we had hung something. With 3.5 knots of current and over 2400’ of line out? It’s not always easy to tell.

But we were connected to a fish and a nice one at that! We gain some and then lose some, overall retrieving more than losing. The weight finally appeared and was removed only to have the fish take a few hundred feet of line from us. Keeping the fish stretched out away from the boat, he finally gave in and got close enough for the perfect dart shot from Hunter. That video is also on our Facebook page.

JR’s prize was now in the boat and it was only a little after 11 am. Well, I guess we’ll go enjoy some of this great Fort Lauderdale fishing and go try for Mahi’s. And we did. LOL